THE FUTURE OF NATIVE AVIFAUNA 209 



It has lost nothing and won much. Its increase has been commensurate 

 with increase of open ground. No longer is it limited to such oases 

 in a desert of fern as landslips, wind-blows, bases of sun-dried cliffs, 

 sand and shingle spits of open river-bed, pig-rootings, bare rocks, and 

 the scanty cultivation-grounds of the old-time Maoris. The bird is a 

 frequenter of neither forest nor marsh, so that operations which have 

 almost annihilated certain species have but enlarged its domain. The 

 area of land open to grasshoppers, daddy-long-legs, and caterpillars is 

 a thousand times greater than of yore. Plough and spade are to this 

 amenable species godsends, disinterring in multitudes the white soft 

 larvae of the green beetle. The Pipit is, moreover, very partial to the 

 alien blow-fly attracted by every carrion on the place. Although truly 

 a bird of the wilderness, it will haunt the garden too on occasion, 

 watching the worker almost as an English robin does, and accepting 

 tit-bits from the hand of a friend. 



The Pukeko or Swamp-hen (Porphyrio melanotus) has, by its gre- 

 garious habits, productivity and general adaptability, proved able to 

 thrive better on dry ground than wet, on grass and clover than on 

 raupo and sedge. In the 'eighties the range of this fine bird was limited 

 to portions of marshland where excessive moisture kept the water- 

 logged flax yellow and starved, to quaking peat-bogs, to debris de- 

 posited by little streams emptying themselves into the lake, to narrow 

 margins of soft ooze between the border of tall flax and the lake itself, 

 to raupo beds in the shallows. The Pukeko has gained by every step 

 in the development of the station, by the destruction of fern, by the 

 felling of forest, by the drainage of marsh, by the increase, in fact, 

 of treadable surface. Hundreds run in swamps now drained dry, 

 hundreds explore the hills, breaking up the dead patches of grass in 

 search of grubs ; cropping itself, the anathema of many species, is a 

 boon to the breed. Tender oats are sweeter than grass, they serve 

 also to conceal the careless nest ; amongst the ripening grain the 

 bird weaves platforms upon which to rest. Nor does he willingly 

 renounce the novel food-supply even when under thatch. The oat 

 straws are carefully and deliberately drawn out one by one, the 

 frugal birds devouring every single grain from one head ere beginning 

 another. The Pukeko is, moreover, in the happy position of being 

 able to regard with equanimity a further contraction of its feeding- 

 grounds. It might even be an advantage to a breed where polygamy 



